1.) You won't know who your real friends are until you've hit rock bottom.
Oh... say... laying in bed with panic attacks except for the times you kind of show up for work, for weeks at a time. Your real friends will be the people who are still calling you after weeks of that sort of thing. Those are your real friends. When those people need a lift somewhere or help moving, do those things for them while smiling.
2.) If you don't succeed at what you're trying to do until you really figure things out, it's okay.
Life is short but not so short that it's worth doing things the wrong way to get them done quicker.
The Buddha didn't figure his shit out until he descended from his daddy's castle to witness Poverty, Sickness and Death. Jesus basically wandered around struggling with unseen voices in the desert until The Dude was thirty. Mark Twain was a goddamn riverboat captain, a war deserter, a failed prospector before he stumbled into writing.
Motherfuckers who succeeded young? Yankees minor league prospect Brien Taylor. The "Home Alone" kid. That chess player who went into hiding and became virulently anti-semetic. Michael Jackson.
If you're eating ramen for five years, you are probably actually learning real things about the real world that will make you wiser in the long run. It's okay. It's okay.
3.) Nobody gives a fuck how good you were in school.
They might care WHERE you went or WHAT you did but... you ain't getting nothing for having a 3.7 instead of a 2.8... and at most, even that will only get you into an interview.
And in that interview, they won't give a fuck at all. College will help you a lot if a professor that likes you is well connected or a good friend of yours is a success out the gate. But unless it's about, like, you need a certain level of certification or something, such as to be a lawyer or a nurse or a teacher... they don't fuck*ng care.
Remember how after your first semester of college, your SAT score no longer meant a damn because even if you tried to go to another college, all they would look at would be those grades? Multiply that realization by fifty. Now triple that.
4.) Anything you do out of a desire to impress someone else will fail horribly.
When you find a way to do things that is about pleasing yourself, man, now you are in the goddamn sweet spot.
Truth to yourself IS success, motherfucker.
5.) Self-confidence is a kind of being insane.
So is arbitrarily agreeing to the concept of time or the concept of money or whatever. But we're here and sometimes you gotta be crazy to survive. Only be as crazy as you need to be. Never let yourself be crazier. Down that path are dragons.
6.) In eighty years, you will be organic compost no matter how big you succeed, no matter how big you fuck up.
This fact can console you at your lows and temper you at your eyes. Nothing will defend you from death, nothing will trap you in a place where death can't reach you. And it's the same for everyone.
7.) We are all in this together.
Don't let the bastards tell you any different.
8.) Possessions will never make you happy because there will always be another bigger possession outside your reach, just over the next goddamn hill.
The bear kept going over mountains and there kept on being fuck*ng mountains. And yet, not having the essentials material possessions CAN make you feel awful and hurt you.
At least today and in the Western world, we are innoculated with an addiction to the heroin that is the pursuit of disgusting wealth from a very young age. And we will all of us always be addicts, even those of us who have been recovering for decades.
Find your methadone.
9.) The good guy finds a way not to kill. The guy who kills for good reasons is only the least bad guy.
10.) If nobody gets hurt and people are happy, it's good. If people get hurt, it's bad, even if the other people having fun don't know that they're hurting others.
Ignorance is a mitigating circumstance, not an excuse, for hurting others.
11.) Anyone who tries to tell you that they know more about the nature of God than you is either trying to use you or completely fuck*ng crazy. Probably both. Any time you try to tell someone that you know more than they do, you are either trying to use them or you're fuck*ng crazy or probably both.
If there's a higher power, each of our experiences with it are different, personal and completely subjective.
12.) There is no objective truth.
We are each of us a sphere of reality with its own subtly different rules. Parallel universes overlapping and changing as we interact with other realities. The whole damn show is subjective. Ayn Rand was a whiny little whore, so unsure of herself that she had to pretend there was one truth for everybody. That's the heart of goddamn insecurity.
13.) If you can find someone who can deal with all your shit patiently and you can deal with all their shit patiently... and you both like fuck*ng each other... shack up together and never let go.
That's love or, at least, that's where love begins from.
14.) A rainstorm that would be an annoyance in New York City is God's own mercy in LA.
15.) Whenever you're hurting bad, remember: everyone else feels that way sometimes too.
Your pain is the same pain that that bum in front of the Seven-Eleven feels, as a senator feels, as a janitor feels, as a nun feels.
No one deserves it... especially not them, especially not you... no matter who they are, no matter what they've done.
We are all the same woman and man in the face of hurt.
If you can remember that and act on that at all times, you will never have anything to regret.
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Topic: 15 things I have learned (Read 26088 times)